Fontstand Could Become The Netflix Of Fonts

TRY FONTS FOR FREE, RENT THEM BY THE MONTH, AND OWN THEM AFTER 12 MONTHS. With the advent of a new service, fonts may be as easy to preview and as cheap to purchase as the newest episode of your favorite TV show. Fonts are generally expensive and difficult to license. Though tools like Adobe Typekit provide access to subscription fonts, they can only be used in Adobe programs. Fontstand, a newly launched OSX app, is pioneering a new model of type licensing that is cheaper and more convenient than traditional licensing, allowing users to rent fonts by the month. Most compellingly, the app lets users test drive thousands of fonts in any program for an hour. This is clearly a huge improvement over using online samples as your sole assessment of a font before purchasing, especially when it includes fonts from foundries like Typofonderie, Type Supply and Process. After…

MARKS OF EXCELLENCE, A FRESHLY REVISED BOOK FROM PHAIDON, COMPILES TODAY’S MOST IDENTIFIABLE LOGOS ACCORDING TO THEIR VISUAL TROPES. A brand is more than a logo. But a company’s mark is its calling card, a shorthand for all that other stuff—the quality of the product, the level of service, the history of the company—for its composite brand. To understand the cultural power and currency of a popular logo, all you have to do is survey a set of preschoolers, who, while unable to order off a menu, can handily identify McDonald’s golden arches, as well as the emblems of Disney and Nike, to name but a few. Once used as a means of denoting ownership or authorship (“This is my cow,” or “I made this ceramic vase”), logos have evolved into creators of value, with consumers often willing to pay much more for products with identifiable marks than for those…